Hon. Chris Bowen MP and Hon. Catherine King MP - Press Conference
17 August 2026
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Press Conferences Australian Parliament
08:03 - 10:14
Speaker 2
Good to go? Great. Thanks for coming everyone. Strengthening Australia's fuel security has been important for our government and for all Australians. And of course, in the face of the most difficult international circumstances imaginable, Australia has been resilient, government and industry working together to ensure that despite the fact that some political parties demanded rationing, some political parties said that rationing was inevitable, we've got through this current crisis in a situation where our fuel security has remained strong.
And my regular updates to the Australian people on Saturdays have confirmed that we have been able to secure the fuel we need. The Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, myself, working together with industry to ensure Australia's fuel security. But we've also had the view that we need to strengthen our security not just for today, but for the years to come. And so today, Catherine and I are announcing the next steps to do that. We're releasing two papers which outline the next steps on two important matters.
As you know, we've made it clear that we need to strengthen our own fuel security, liquid fuel security, by holding more fuel in Australia. While we've got through the last, this crisis well internationally, it would have been better if we had had more fuel in Australia. When we came to office, we had two refineries. When we left office in 2013, there were six. When we came back, there were two.
And of course, our fuel stocks were held in Texas. We've worked to improve that and we want to improve it even more in the years to come. In the budget, we announced that we would establish a Australian Strategic Fuel Reserve, a government-owned reserve of a billion litres to ensure that we have, in the ownership of the Australian people, a buffer to get us through difficult times. We also announced we'd increase the minimum stock obligation on the fuel that has to be held in Australia by Australian companies. And today, I'm releasing a consultation paper about the finer details about how to implement that, about where the Australian Strategic Fuel Reserve should be held, for example, in regional areas, proposing that we consider holding some in each part of Australia, how quickly we should build the reserve, who should manage it on behalf of the government, etc.
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